A hodge-podge at the end of the year

I read an interesting article in the local daily newspaper today that led me to a website that measures people’s implicit attitudes towards mental illness.

Visitors to the Project Implicit Mental Health website can measure their implicit assessments of things like anxiety, depression and people with mental illness.

Project Implicit Mental Health is part of a larger research program, Project Implicit.

Project Implicit's information site shows the study’s website findings after seven years, including the finding that people’s implicit biases can predict behavior.

I’m glad people’s attitudes about mental illness are being studied.

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Thanks to those of you who commented about my decision to try ERP. I appreciate the support. I’m excited! I won’t see my psychiatrist for two weeks, and then I’ll have to wait for an appointment with the cognitive therapy specialist.

I would like to do some research on the therapy beforehand. Any suggestions on sources that have helped you?

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  I am setting goals for myself instead of resolutions, as some of you have suggested. Goals can be made anytime and aren’t tied to Jan. 1. I can make them as I go along.

And I don’t have to take on all my goals at once. I can work on one at a time if I want, and really get specific about the objectives and steps I need to make to reach the goal.

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  I am so glad I started blogging! It has been a beautiful experience for me, and I look forward to writing and posting in 2012.

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  Here are some quotations that are meaningful to me that I would like to share:

“The only escape from the miseries of life are music and cats . . .”

-Albert Schweitzer

“Until he extends the circle of his compassion to all living things, man will not himself find peace.”

-Albert Schweitzer

“I will not let anyone walk through my mind with their dirty feet.”

-Mahatma Gandhi

“I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.”

-Joan Didion

“Cats are dangerous companions for writers because cat watching is a near-perfect method of writing avoidance.”

-Dan Greenburg

“For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’

“Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’

“The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’”

-Matthew 25: 35-40 (NIV)

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I wish you all a safe, productive and beautiful 2012. Happy New Year!

I am going to do it

I have decided to ask my psychiatrist to refer me to the doctor in the practice who does cognitive behavioral therapy. I want to try the exposure response prevention therapy.

I have written about my doubts over whether or not I needed such therapy, and I’ve gotten some really helpful comments on this blog.

I have also learned from those of you who write wonderful blogs about your own experiences with OCD. It seems that ERP therapy is helping many of you, and I want to experience some of that success.

I have been mulling over it, and it became clear to me this evening that I need the therapy.

I have been having periods of time lately when I have been a checking fiend.

For example, I stare at the lamps in my office at work to make sure they are “really” off until I think I must surely be going crazy.

And I know it’s the OCD! I have been doing things like this for most of my life. And I still feel like I’m going crazy.

Also, I have a nagging sense that OCD has negatively affected my life and is still affecting it in ways I don’t even realize.

I have reached a point in my life where I don’t want to be held back by OCD, anxiety or depression anymore. I want to better manage these conditions so that I accomplish what I am supposed to accomplish while I’m on this earth.

I may sound overly dramatic, but I am as serious as I’ve ever been about getting better and living life as fully as I can.

So, I see my doctor on Jan. 16, and I will get the ball rolling. In the meantime, I’ll get through the episodes as best I can.

Post-Christmas and Pre-New Year

I hope all of you had a peaceful and joyful Christmas.

Some of you may relate to this: I had a Christmas holiday that included times of peace and joy. I appreciated those times and tried to remind myself that no one ever has the perfect Christmas like TV movies portray.

The peace and joy: time spent with my husband, talking and laughing together; opening gifts together; ringing bells for the Salvation Army together; going to church together; listening to Christmas music together; and just being together.

Peace and joy: going to church on Christmas Day and listening to the Christmas story and singing carols and wishing others Merry Christmas.

Peace and joy: time spent with my mother and mother-in-law and stepdaughter.

Peace and joy: remembering that Christmas is the “dawn of redeeming grace” and a reminder of how important it is to serve others.

And the not-so-joyous parts? Dealing with a mother and mother-in-law who seemed resistant to me being a vegetarian; being with a mother who never understood the word “boundaries”; being in crowded stores and restaurants; knowing there’s so much violence in the world (like the bombings in Nigeria during Christmas Mass); and knowing many people are not as fortunate as I am to have a warm home, plenty to eat and people who care about me.

It all goes together to make up life, doesn’t it? The good and the bad, the joyous and the sad, the hope and despair, what we can control and what we cannot.

I’m grateful that I had joy and peace during Christmas, much more than many people had.

Tomorrow it’s back to work, but only a three-day workweek. I’ll have Friday off for New Year’s. I hope remembering that will help me get out of bed!

As for the time leading up to the New Year, I’ll be thinking about resolutions. I’m not sure how I’ll deal with that. I tend to want to make resolutions, but I know from my own experience how so very hard it is to keep them.

I also tend to make too many resolutions that really represent a complete makeover of my life.

I want to set my focus on serving others. I want to make changes to help me do that. I need to make changes in dealing with my “issues”—OCD, anxiety and depression. I want to lose weight, exercise and get physically stronger. I want to spend my time more wisely, write more, have a better attitude, be more mindful, engage in meditation more, practice yoga more, etc.

Sounds rather obsessive, doesn’t it? One resolution is not enough, because there are so many things I need to change right now.

How do you go about making resolutions . . . and keeping them? Do you make just one? Do you write down your resolutions? Do you build in accountability? If so, how?

I’m looking for ideas and insight, so any you can provide will be appreciated!

Christmas thoughts

I recently finished a book called “Christmas Is Not Your Birthday: Experience the Joy of Living and Giving Like Jesus,” by Mike Slaughter. It gave me a different perspective on the holiday season, and I’d like to share some of my thoughts about it.

I’ve posted and some of you have posted and commented about the disconnect between the expectations that the holiday season is “the best time of the year” and our real feelings about this time of year.

In addition to not having a jolly attitude, I’ve had another problem with the holidays, of my own doing.

I talk about how commercial Christmas is, and how the emphasis for so many people is on spending a lot of money on gifts and expecting lots of gifts in return, and stressing out over trying to make things perfect.

I admit, thought, that I’ve been a part of that consumerism too. I spend way too much money on Christmas gifts, and I look forward too much to the gifts that I will get. And I certainly stress out over everything I supposedly have to do to get ready for the holidays.

“Christmas Is Not Your Birthday” gave me a new way of thinking about the holidays. Perhaps that is what I needed, a new way of thinking to replace my old way of thinking and acting.

Slaughter, too, talks about our focus on self and consuming during the Christmas season. He recognizes that people’s idea of an ideal Christmas is not rooted in reality.

He reminds us that the first Christmas, the night Jesus was born, was not an ideal situation either: “The real Christmas was a snapshot of poverty and anxiety, not feel-good warm fuzzies.” (p. 20)

Slaughter said in his life on earth, Jesus was focused on helping those in poverty, which did not just mean just those with a lack of money:

“Also, understand that when poverty is used in the Bible, its meaning is broader than ‘economic limitation.’ Poverty, in the deepest biblical sense, is any kind of brokenness, whether that be in a personal or cultural context, that restricts people from living in the fullness of humanity that God intends.” (p. 54)

What makes Christmas and the rest of our lives meaningful, according to Slaughter, is serving others as Jesus did.

I thought of those of us who suffer from maladies that many people don’t understand, like OCD, anxiety and depression, when I read this passage in the book:

“Likewise, God shows up and speaks to us through others who have experienced similar struggles and come out on the other side. That means your experiences of pain, and, eventually, hope can also become the seed for God’s miracle in someone else’s life.” (p. 34)

That certainly gives me comfort and hope. I hope I can carry a sense of meaning into the new year.

I hope all of you have a safe, peaceful and joyous holiday, no matter how you spend it. Merry Christmas!

*All quotations from the electronic version of the book.

Tricking OCD

Probably all of us with OCD have some tricks that we pull out and perform to deal with the obsessive thoughts and compulsive actions.

I thought I would share one of mine.

I’ve been doing this one for many years. When I can remember to use it in the midst of an OCD episode, and when I fully engage in it, it helps me a great deal.

First, let me tell you about a woman I work with.

Her position in the office requires her to answer the phone a lot. She has been with the paper for years, so I guess she has heard everything.

When she answers a call and she’s really busy, especially if it’s a layout day, she sometimes will tell the caller something along the lines of, everyone is busy today. Can you call back tomorrow?

When she hangs up, she’ll say, I don’t have time for this today.

All of us in the office know this isn’t the best customer service, but apparently she does it in such a way that most callers go along with her.

Her method of turning away a caller with a non-urgent request is similar to how I respond to certain OCD intrusions.

It helps when I’m facing uncertainty like the following:

• Did I turn off the light in the closet?
• Is the water faucet properly turned off?
• Did I pick up every piece of lint I could find on the floor?
• Did I wipe every bit of stickiness from the kitchen counter?
• Did I rinse all the soap off the dish I just washed so the next person who eats from it won’t get diarrhea from the soap residue?
• Variations on the above.

When I know in my non-OCD thoughts that I have done everything I can to make sure I’ve done what I needed to do, I tell myself, OK, I can see the light is off/I’ve rinsed the dish repeatedly/etc. I’ve done my best. I can’t know anything for certain.

Then I force myself to walk out of the room, or out of the house, whatever, to go on with my day.

It’s hard. I feel such anxiety that I believe I won’t be able to forget it, that I won’t be able to focus on anything else.

But I keep moving physically away from the scene of the OCD episode.

Many times I realize later that I’ve gotten busy with other thoughts and actions and moved past the obsession.

It probably helps that I’ve been hearing from OCD for most of my life and can recognize it pretty easily.

Please understand. I do this when I know I have done my absolute best to make sure things are safe. I realize that it is the OCD driving my uncertainty, and I basically tell the OCD, not now. I’ll deal with you later.

Or maybe, I don’t have time for you today, OCD. Can you call back tomorrow?

Where does the lonely hide?

Sometimes I think that because I have OCD, anxiety and depression, I’m extra sensitive and hyper-alert to how I feel. I monitor how stressed I feel, how down I get, how tense.

I try to be aware of any changes because if I need to make an adjustment in medications, I want to jump on it quickly. And lately, I’m analyzing myself more closely to try to decide if I want to take cognitive behavioral therapy.

But sometimes the feelings sneak up on me.

I had a semi-pleasant day today. I conducted an interview and wrote four stories for the paper tomorrow. It was hard for me to concentrate and settle down to write the stories, but I managed to get them done and get home at 7:15.

Once I got home, I thought things were OK. I told my husband about my day, watched part of “Jeopardy” and snuggled with my cat Sam.

But I started thinking about Waddles and, as soon as my husband left to go get some takeout for dinner, I had a deep crying spell over her.

Waddles was my beautiful baby cat who died in October. I wrote about her and the incredibly positive impact she had on my life in a past post.

I just fell down into the grief of losing her. I wanted to have her with me so badly. I didn’t want to go on without her.

When my husband got home, I told him how lonely I felt without Wa. He said he understood because she and I had spent so much time together.

I am still grieving. I understand that. And I understand that I’ll never “get over” her. I don’t want to.

But I have become more able to get things done, to focus on what’s in front of me, of making over the other cats. There are things that I still can’t think about, but the tears haven’t been so close to the surface lately.

I guess what surprised me about the episode this evening was that it seemed to come out of nowhere.

But then I remembered that I got out the Christmas stockings last night, including Waddles’ stocking. Maybe that stocking, which now represents a lost loved one, burrowed down into me and pushed the grief to the surface.

Maybe I’m not as self-aware as I think I am.

Stare. On. Off. Stare.

My mother was a beautiful cook.

She no longer cooks. She lives in an assisted living facility and has her meals prepared for her now.

But she was a true artist in the kitchen for most of my life.

She loved to try different dishes, and she read cookbooks like other people read novels. She understood how ingredients worked together and mixed them creatively.

During the holidays, she made beautifully decorated cookies, fruit cakes, hermit cakes, coconut cakes and all kinds of pies, all from scratch.

She learned to cook in home economics classes in high school. During at least one of those years, her teacher required her to cook one meal at home each week. Her family, which included nine siblings, looked forward to her night to cook.

Both of my brothers do some cooking, but I, her only daughter, do very little. I have never developed the love for cooking that my mother had, and I never seemed to have a knack for it.

But I think I have avoided cooking mostly for OCD reasons. Cooking can be messy, and making sure I’ve cleaned everything well enough can be very difficult.

Cooking also usually involves the use of a stove, and I don’t like stoves.

In one of my early posts, I wrote about the different ways obsessive-compulsive disorder showed itself in my life.

One group of symptoms that made my list was checking. One of the things I have checked countless times is the stove.

The compulsion has been to check and recheck the stove to make sure I turned it off after cooking.

The underlying anxiety is the fear that if I leave the stove on, a fire will start and burn the house down and my loved ones will die. The fire could spread, and then others would be harmed.

My favorite recipes call for microwave cooking or no cooking at all.

The “checking the stove ritual” used to be a tremendous source of anxiety and fear. I don’t suffer as much from it now, but I still have that anxious feeling when I cook, and I still start my checking ritual almost without thinking.

I am able to cut off the ritual more easily now, but I have to admit I give myself a blanket reassurance by asking my husband to check behind me.

Even though I don’t go into a frenzy over the stove like I used to, I know that my life continues to be affected by this aspect of my OCD. I still don’t cook a lot. I still almost panic when I’m asked to bring a dish to a potluck.

I wonder if I would be a “top cook” (what my father called my mother) if I didn’t have OCD?

Here’s a picture of what my stove-checking ritual looked like at its worst. I had experiences like this one mostly in my late-20s, when I was in graduate school.

It’s 9 p.m. I need to study, but first I need to clean up my supper dishes, which are stacked next to the sink in my small kitchen in my small apartment. I don’t look at the stove yet.

I wash the dishes and wipe the counter first.

To cook my frozen dinner, I used the microwave, not the conventional oven. No cooking on the stove. I seldom used it.

But the stove is still at the end of the counter. I haven’t used it in weeks, but every night I check it. I may have left one or more of the stovetop eyes on the last time I used it. Or in checking it, I might have left it on.

I turn each knob on, then off, trying to be sure that it’s off. There’s no convenient “click” to tell me when the knob is back in the off position, so I have to press the knob back in a counter clock direction and apply just the right pressure so that it doesn’t bounce back into an “on” position. I’ll do each knob one time, I tell God. I promise Him.

The problem with these knobs is that the line over the word off doesn’t measure perfectly against the word off. Or they don’t seem to measure perfectly. I stoop and stare from different directions. I close my left eye and look with my right eye, then switch eyes. In some positions the knobs look okay. In others, they don’t.

Maybe I didn’t do it right. Maybe they’re not all off. I tell God that I just need to do each knob one more time. I ask Him to forgive me for lying to Him, and I promise Him, this is it.

I start from scratch. Twist the knob to the on position, twist it off, feeling for the right pressure, squinting to measure the line against the word. I pray out loud: “I’m sorry, God. I’ve got this awful feeling inside. I need to do this one more time. Please forgive me for lying to you. I know I’m an awful person. I lied to You, God! But I am promising You, this is it.”

I feel a rhythm. It’s not a song, just a beat that’s going on inside of my head. I turn the knobs on and off to the beat. If I get out-of-step with the beat, I have to start over again. On, off, on, off. Feel the burners. Analyze the heat. On, off, on, off. Forgive me God. One more time. On, off, on, off. Analyze the heat. On, off.

I am going to explode. I jump up and down, then slam my hands against the wall and cry. I wish I had the courage to bang my head against the wall and die.

Back to the stove. The rhythm. The prayers. The tears. The waiting. I’m waiting for that feeling inside me that tells me the stove’s okay. I don’t know where the feeling comes from, but I know I need it before I can walk away.

When I finally feel it, I try not to think about it. It’s not a strong feeling of reassurance. But I am so tired. I am so tired. My legs hurt from standing in front of the stove. My hands hurt from the banging and from the careful examination of the burners.

I pull one of my back-up actions. I walk around to the closet where the breaker box is. I turn off the switch that controls the flow of electricity to the stove.

I’m done. I did what I needed to do before I could start studying. But I can no longer focus my eyes enough to read. I fall on top of my bed. The clock says 3:30 a.m.